Panel co-sponsored by NAVSA and ACCUTE (the Association of CanadianCollege and University Teachers of English), for the Congress of theHumanities and Social Sciences, to be held May 26 to May 29, 2007, atthe U of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

In a culture turned increasingly toward the outward and the material,the Victorians often took measurable quantities as indices of value. From the sheer heft of the three-decker novel to Isambard KingdomBrunel's Great Eastern, the largest steam-powered vessel in the worldat the time of its launch, from the mass of manufactured goodsassembled at the Crystal Palace, to the ever more numerous coloniesthat made up the British Empire, the English took enormous pride inthe scale and proportion of their artistic, technological, andpolitical achievements. But while ?the bigger the better? might havebecome a rule of thumb for many, others saw the glorification oflargeness as a cause for concern. Thomas Malthus raised alarmsconcerning the untrammeled growth of the population, while poets andpainters pursing the doctrine of art for art's sake producedexquisite miniatures in reaction to the bourgeois taste for themassive and heavy. Size mattered for the Victorians, and matteritself was a question of size.

Proposals are invited for this joint NAVSA/ACCUTE session. Possibletopics include, but are not limited to: